Two demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Iran

NEW YORK CITY

WHY WE'RE STILL HERE
On June 12, 2009 we declared that we would stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Iran. We pledged to make their voices heard and to raise our voices loudly where their cries had been suppressed. We pronounced ourselves a new generation of human rights advocates inspired by the brave men and women on the streets throughout Iran. Today, we remain steadfast.

One year later, the Iranian government continues to imprison all human rights defenders and to meet any dissent with violence. We gather to advocate for the rights and well-being of the Iranian people and stand against the rising tide of violence and despotism that has come to
define the Iranian Government. Today we uphold our faithful commitment to the inviolable right of self-determination for our brothers and sisters in Iran.

When: June 12th, 2010 AT 12:30PM
Where: Iranian Mission to the United Nations
622 Third Avenue
(Between 40th and 41st)
with march and rally to follow

Attendees are invited to participate in a living art installation that recounts the journey of the Iranian people in the past year. We will be highlighting the names and images of prisoners of conscience.
Rally Program Features:
Freedom Glory Project, the original lineup
Mamak Khadem, formerly of Axiom of Choice
Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Professor Hossein Kamaly, Barnard University
Austin Heap, Haystack Creator
Participants will read from a collection of letters, poems, and testimonies, composed by our brave Iranian brothers and sisters, that spoke to our hearts, inspired our resolve and gave us hope to stand with them as they strive for a brighter future.
www.whereismyvoteny.org

CHICAGO
You are invited to join a demonstration called by The Committee in Solidarity with the People's Struggle in Iran - Chicago
Saturday, June 12, 2010
12:00pm - 2:00pm
Tribune Tower, 435 N. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL

Workers Uniting, the First Global Union

Last week in Las Vegas, the United Steelworkers and the UK based Unite the Union agreed to merge to create the first global union. Together they'll represent almost 3 million workers.

US LEAP: a valuable anti-sweatshop group

US LEAP (U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project), one of the more effective anti-sweatshop, anti-"free trade" groups celebrated in 20th anniversary recently.

Among the speakers at the event was, Gabriela Lemus, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).

The AFL-CIO Blog ran a report on her speech which contained a good round-up of the failures of NAFTA. You can find it here.

Here are some highlights

Globalization, immigration and trade policies are intertwined—and you can’t solve one without addressing the other two...

Lemus says the global economy is not working because “there is a huge disconnect between the multinational corporations and consumers, and it is threatening our democracy.”

“Corporations are no longer loyal to one market, and as a result they have no sense of national identity. They are actually becoming so big they are competing with nation states. They don’t respect boundaries, but they expect us to.”

If we really cared about the people of Mexico, we would create jobs there that would allow them to make a decent living. We’re scapegoating immigrants for a problem they didn’t create. We’re attacking the symptom, but not getting at the root causes.

Check out the attractive and informative US LEAP website.

Wal'mart's volunteer labor in Mexico

I posted this on the group blog Everyday Citizen.

Here's a good idea: international labor rights groups blog together

The International Labor Rights Forum blog is now a joint project with two similar-mined groups: STITCH and US LEAP. It's called "Labor is not a Commodity" Looks like it will be a go to place to get news about the brutal exploitation that corporate globalization visits on workers in poor countries.

Here's descriptions of the three groups.

International Labor Rights Fund
ILRF is an advocacy organization dedicated to achieving just and humane treatment for workers worldwide. ILRF serves a unique role among human rights organizations as advocates for and with working poor around the world. We believe that all workers have the right to a safe working environment where they are treated with dignity and respect, and where they can organize freely to defend and promote their rights and interests. We are committed to overcoming the problems of child labor, forced labor, and other abusive labor practices. We promote enforcement of labor rights internationally through public education and mobilization, research, litigation, legislation, and collaboration with labor, government and business groups.

STITCH
Women in Central America and the U.S. face similar challenges in the workplace, especially when it comes to low wages, discrimination, insufficient childcare services and dangerous working conditions. To change these shared conditions, STITCH, founded in 1998, unites Central American and U.S. women workers to exchange strategies on how to fight for economic justice in the workplace. STITCH equips women with the essential skills through trainings and educational tools, and in the process, builds lasting relationships with women across the two regions, further empowering women in the labor movement. STITCH also ensures women's voices are heard in global debates and discussions on issues that impact them: globalization, trade agreements, immigration policy, and global labor standards.

U.S./LEAP
The U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project (U.S./LEAP) works to support the basic rights of workers in Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, especially those who are employed directly or indirectly by U.S. companies. Founded in 1987 as the U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project (U.S./GLEP) by trade unionists and human rights advocates concerned about the basic rights of Guatemalan workers, US/LEAP has since expanded its work to other countries in the region.

UPDATE 8/14: Thanks to A.L. for catching that the link to the collaborative blog didn't work, it's been corrected.

Slave Labor in China

National Public Radio had a shocking report today on slave labor in China. Here's their blurb

The son of a local Communist Party leader has been implicated in forced labor in China's Shanxi and Henan Provinces, where impoverished people, many of them children, have been abducted or lured to brick kilns, locked up and forced to work without pay. The central government expressed outrage at the abuse following reports in the Chinese media.

Families of many of the enslaved workers hadn't known why they vanished or where they were, and parents are searching for missing children.

LISTEN HERE

Bono--humanitarian or t ax dodger

Bono, the lead singer of U2, wants to be thought of as a humanitarian, but the sad truth is that he is a tax dodger. He chastises governments for not following through on commitments to Africa, while taking advantage of tax loopholes. For god sake, the man is a multi-millionaire. NPR interviewed him recently and the only tough questions they asked was why he wears sunglasses and what he talked to President Bush about.

Here's Lucy Komisar on the tax dodger

Bono’s protest at a Berlin news conference Monday might be taken more seriously if he and his U2 band were not contributing to the system that deprives developing countries of far more than western aid – much of which has to be repaid.

Bono is a tax dodger. The Irish Bono ran his music publishing company in Ireland, where he and his partners took advantage of a law that exempted musicians and artists from taxes on royalties. To dodge taxes on non-royalty income, Bono’s interests had the help of offshore nominee directors...

Bono’s Dublin company earned $110 million in 2005. Taking profits through the company rather than individually, Bono would have had to pay only 12.5 percent corporate tax, a rate still below that of the local bus conductor or plumber or school teacher.

But that apparently was too much for the man who has homes on the Irish Coast and in the South of France and New York City. So, last year, Bono “moved” the registration of his business to the Netherlands, where it will pay about 5 percent tax on royalties.

Maybe Ireland and the countries of the G-7 could provide more development aid if Bono and people like him didn’t dodge their fair taxes.

What might the people in the countries he wants to help think about this? The same “move your registration to the lowest tax rate” system that Bono uses is employed by multinational corporations to dodge taxes worldwide.

Developing countries lose an estimated $500 billion every year as a result.

As Africa is the continent Bono expresses most concern about, he ought to listen to what the African Union says: Tax dodging by foreign companies costs it $150 billion a year - three times what it receives in aid.

Workers Memorial Day

GLOBAL COST OF WORKPLACE DEATH AND INJURIES

Each year, over two million women and men die as a result of 270 million occupational accidents and 160 million new cases of occupational disease each year, figures that are supplemented by ILO/WHO estimates that occupational diseases alone cause over 1.7 million deaths, and that at least 268 million non-fatal workplace accidents occur each year. It is furthermore estimated that over half of the 355,000 on-the-job fatalities occur in agriculture, the sector with half the world’s workforce. Other high risk sectors are mining, construction and commercial fishing. Four percent of the world’s gross domestic product (US $1,251 billion) is lost through absence of work from injury, death and disease, sickness treatment, disability and survivor benefits. Illness results in a loss of four or more working days in at least 1/3 of all cases. The loss in GDP resulting from the cost of death and illness in the work force is 20 times greater than all official development assistance to developing countries. Each year, 12,000 children are killed on the job and hazardous substances kill 340,000 workers annually, while asbestos alone claims about 100,000 lives.

Source: ILO

AFL-CIO Worker's Memorial Day Page

Hazards, a UK based safety site has a round-up of Worker's Memorial Day events around the globe.

Illegal Immigration Not Just American Issue

Name a country were ten percent of the residents are illegal residents from nearby poorer, slower growing economies? Where there is a powerful nativist backlash against the migrants? Where there's a movement to kick them all out, but widespread acceptance that the economy depends on their presence? Where there's a large scale roundup of the migrants? Where those rounded up have their legal rights routinely violated? Where the undocumented workers are subject to mistreatment and abuse?

Okay.

Not the US, but Malaysia. The bar association is mounting a campaign to abolish corporal punishment.

migrant workers have often received negative coverage in the media. Many Malaysians are worried about the incidence of serious crime. Others link the rising crime rate with the high number of migrants, estimated to number close to 10 per cent of the population, even though statistics reveal that they are not more prone to crime.

The country's top police officer was reported as saying last month that only 2 per cent of crimes in the country were committed by foreigners. However, he proposed that all foreign workers be confined to their quarters and have their movements monitored by management to prevent them from committing crimes.

Despite the inuman conditions, Malaysia's relative prosperity has continued to attract thousands of illegal or undocumented workers from such neighbouring countries as Indonesia, Burma, India, the Philippines and Bangladesh where job opportunities are scarce.

Brain Drain

According to a report on one of Thursday's NPR programs:

There are more Ethiopian doctors in Washington, D.C. than in the entire country of Ethiopia,a country of 70 million.

How Free Trade Hurts

Senators Bryan Dorgan and Sherrod Brown in the Washington Post

Over the past 100 years, Americans have built a thriving middle class. It's the envy of the world, and it didn't come easily. At the turn of the 20th century, America was split dramatically between the haves and have-nots. It was a harsh work world for many: nasty, brutish and, too often, short. Worker activism, new laws and court decisions changed all that during the past century. The American Dream seemed within reach of everyone who worked hard and played by the rules. That is what's at stake when we talk about trade policy: America's middle class and the American Dream. Fair trade is not the enemy of more trade. It's how we expand international trade without reversin

g U.S. economic progress.

World Bank Promotes Elimination of worker protection

From the International Confederatio of Free Trade Unions

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions strongly criticized the new edition of the World Bank's highest-circulation publication, Doing Business, for including recommendations that governments should do away with labour market regulations and emulate those countries that have almost no worker protection rules of any kind and are not members of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

The 2007 edition of Doing Business, prepared by the Bank's private sector development department, has declared the Marshall Islands to be the world's "Best Performer" for its almost total absence of labour regulation, displacing last year's champion, Palau. Both Marshall
Islands and Palau have in common that they are tiny Pacific island nations that have no labour code and are not members of the ILO. The World Bank's online Doing Business database explains that it has given top ranking for labour market regulations to these countries because,
among other exemplary features, both allow workers to be forced to work up to 24 hours per day and up to seven days per week and require no vacations or advance notice for dismissal.

Not being among the 179 member countries of the ILO, Marshall Islands and Palau are among the handful of countries not obliged to abide by the core labour standards (elimination of forced labour, child labour and iscrimination, and respect for freedom of association and right to
collective bargaining) as required of ILO members.

In light of the fact that World Bank presidents have expressed support for the core labour standards as being consistent with the Bank's development mission, the general secretary of ICFTU, Guy Ryder, finds it ironic that the World Bank's most highly-promoted annual publication holds up countries that offer almost no protection for their workers as "Best Performers" for their labour standards. One division of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, even stipulates that it will not lend to firms that do not apply the core labour standards.

Ryder stated: "The World Bank should get its message straight. If the Bank truly believes that the ILO's core labour standards are good for development, it can't turn around and praise countries that don't join the ILO and don't respect the core standards as the world's 'Best
Performer' for their labour standards. The Bank should remove the mandate of labour market regulation from the department that prepares Doing Business and stop using Doing Business as the basis for its labour market reform proposals."

Ryder noted that earlier editions of Doing Business have been used in World Bank and IMF country-level strategy documents to force countries to do away with various kinds of workers' protection. For example, a recent World Bank Economic Memorandum to Colombia demanded that the government make hiring and firing decisions more flexible in order to improve its Doing Business indicators, even though it is uncertain whether this will have a positive economic impact. These demands have furthermore been made a condition for World Bank loans to Colombia.

In South Africa, the IMF recommended in a recent policy report that the government improve its Doing Business indicators by "streamlining" its hiring and dismissal procedures. The changes would have required doing away with affirmative action rules that post-apartheid governments put in place in order to correct the legacy of several decades of racial discrimination. (These and several other cases of the IMF and World Bank's use of Doing Business to remove workers' protection are described in a detailed analysis prepared by the ICFTU:

http://www.icftu.org/www/PDF/doingbusinessicftuanalysis0606.pdf